FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION - PAGE 4

Dear Abby: I recently watched a country music award given to two men. The first to speak hogged the mike, gabbed about his sick child at home, thanked everyone in the music business and then invited his partner to speak. As the other man approached the mike, the first remembered he hadn't thanked his wife, shouldered his way back in and droned on about how many years they had been together, yadda-yadda-yadda. The partner looked sad as the music came up and they went to commercial.

Dear Ann Landers: I have prostate cancer. This is the most common cancer among men. Now, because of advances in medical science, most men can be as lucky as I am. My cancer developed after the PSA test became available, meaning it could be detected at such an early stage that chances are it won't shorten my life. Before the PSA, many prostate cancers weren't detected until symptoms appeared, which meant the cancer was much more advanced. I am also lucky because my cancer developed after a new form of treatment passed muster.

When Massachusetts' highest court announced the decision that ensured the state would be the first to legalize same-sex marriages, it cited the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that spelled the end to racial segregation in America. Prominent black state legislators compared blacks' long struggle to gain civil rights to the gay-rights movement. They stood with gay activists at the state's constitutional convention, which was suspended in February without any resolution, and did so again last week as lawmakers moved toward approving an amendment that would ban gay marriage but allow civil-union benefits.

The rabbis of Judaism's Reform movement declared Wednesday that gay relationships are "worthy of affirmation" through Jewish ritual and that Reform rabbis who decide to officiate at same-sex ceremonies will have the support of the branch's rabbinical body--as will those who decide they will not. The decision by the Central Conference of American Rabbismakes the conference the largest group of American clergy to affirm that its members may conduct...

An unusual coalition of religious leaders--from televangelist Pat Robertson to Imam Wallace Deen Mohammed, onetime Nation of Islam heir and now a leader in mainstream African-American Islam--vowed Wednesday to put poverty back on the nation's agenda. The nationally prominent clergymen, in a gathering at Southern Illinois University organized by former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, called for jobs programs that would reach the hardest core of jobless poor, then offered their own congregations a laundry list of ways they can help.

In a cavernous hall in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, where two empty balconies hinted of days long past when much larger congregations gathered, about a dozen members of the Peoples Church began a conversation Sunday about race relations in America. "It's long, long overdue," Rev. Jean Siegfried Darling told her small, diverse, mostly older membership. They joined hundreds of United Church of Christ congregations across the country in the dialogue on race, sparked last month by the controversial statements of Sen. Barack Obama's longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side.

Discovery will carry the first shuttle-borne "Star Wars" experiment into orbit next month along with three communications satellites, NASA and Defense Department officials said Monday. A spokesman for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization at the Pentagon said an "optical tracking device" would be carried aloft by Discovery's seven-member crew, which includes a Frenchman and a nephew of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, when the flight starts around June 14. The mission will mark the first experiment directly related to the "Star Wars" missile-defense program to be carried into space aboard a shuttle.

As relief and recovery efforts continue along the Gulf Coast, religious leaders are scrambling--sometimes from afar--to find their clergy and determine whether the buildings where they worshiped are still standing. Assessments of faith-related damage from Hurricane Katrina are hard to come by, and people are dispersed so widely some pastors have no clue how their congregants are doing. With communication breakdowns, official counts on deaths and damage often are not yet available, church leaders say. Gwen Green, communications coordinator for United Methodist churches in Mississippi, said efforts to contact pastors and churches are continuing.

The chief evangelist and highest elected officer for the Unitarian Universalist Association believes, above all, in the mystique and miracles of marketing. And he also subscribes to the slightly worn motto of one major American automobile rental company, which promises to try harder in order to dethrone the industry leader. So Rev. William F. Schulz, the brash and media-savvy president of the liberal UUA movement, has been working overtime to gain fresh visibility for his denomination and to provide an alternative voice and vision within American religion.

As a melting-pot faith that holds no creed and welcomes all comers, the Unitarian Universalist church hasn't always seen much need to evangelize. But as the atheists, Christians, humanists and Buddhists in its pews grow older and with the church growing only at a trickle, Unitarians are experimenting with a different approach. The Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations this year launched its first national advertising campaign, placing ads in Time magazine.